"Temptress Moon" (1996)

(Originally released as Feng Yue)

Starring: Leslie Cheung, Gong Li, Kevin Lin, Caifei He, Shih Chang, Liankun Lin, Xiangting Ge

First, the Lowdown: A blackmailing gigolo returns to the stately manor he was once a servant in.

What can I say, I gotta fetish for Chinese period dramas. That being said, Temptress Moon is kind of an odd duck, both for its story and the time period it represents. Zhongliang is the servant to his sister Xiuyi and brother-in-law Zhengda. Zhengda is the reigning heir of the Pang clan. Like his father and younger sister, Zhengda is thoroughly addicted to opium. Tired of being mistreated by his brother-in-law, Zhongliang runs away to Shanghai under the pretense of schooling there.

Fast forward a few years. The eldest Pang has passed away and Zhengda has contracted some mysterious malady that has left him an invalid. With great reluctance, the clan elders pass leadership on to the younger sister, Ruyi. Duanwu, a distaff cousin is assigned to watch over her with the expectation that he’ll be making the decisions more than her. That’s thrown out the window, however, when Duanwu sides with Ruyi’s decision to send the concubines of the elder Pangs out of the estate instead of letting them serenely retire.

Meanwhile, Zhongliang has been seducing women left and right in Shanghai to blackmail them out of money. When his boss finds out about the change of leadership in the wealthy Pang family, he implores Zhongliang to use his familiarity with the clan to exploit the situation. Zhonglian sees the opportunity to avenge himself after being their servant for so long, but finds himself oddly enamored with the awkward Ruyi.

The movie is shot like an episode of Red Shoe Diaries, probably to emphasize the opium haze that most of the characters wander in an out of. The thing that makes Temptress Moon more fascinating than most period pieces is that it illustrates the culture shock between the long-standing Chinese aristocracy and the sudden westernization of the country.

Line of the movie: “In Shanghai men and women are at war.”

Three and a half stars. Don’t walk.